Posted on 01/02/2018 2:34:49 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
David Slade knew that for the story to work, the predatory robot had to be a realistic threat for both audience and prey. The effective other half of a horror two-hander, the faceless, nameless robot had to convey all the dread of future where all forms of life were under attack.
“We very quickly came to the idea in the backstory of what the robot was and how it’s made, that it would probably be a piece of military hardware. That it wouldn’t have generalized artificial intelligence, but it would have enough artificial intelligence to problem solve and that it be based on using technology just a few years down the line. What we did was we tried to make it as realistic and as close to what we thought would work as possible. Specifically, how it would sense the world. How it would see the world. We had some designs for ones that had camouflage on them, which we ended up not doing in the end, but they looked really cool.”
“One of the things that we talked a lot about was LIDAR. It’s the way in which most driverless cars, most autonomous robotic devices, use to get data about the world and figure out how far things are away. We actually did a bunch of testing with LIDAR cameras and found that we could quite easily create imagery of topography of the world. What we ended up doing is taking LIDAR cameras to all of our locations and LIDAR scanning all of our locations. When it came to you seeing what the robots saw, that was pretty damn accurate. A lot of it was 2D paintings put together. It was all very practical and real.”
(Excerpt) Read more at indiewire.com ...
I included the LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) quote in the excerpt above because I thought it was very well depicted and, as Slade says, accurately portrays what LIDAR does.
If you want to see real LIDAR being used in autonomous vehicles, check out Velodyne LIDAR.
Real LIDAR images at YouTube:
1. Butterfield 2.M2TS: Live LiDar scan with a Velodyne scanner, mounted atop a pickup truck (2010).
2. Velodyne LiDAR VLS-128™ Sensor: Velodyne VLS-128 sensor (2017).
I have only watched the first 2 episodes of this season of Black Mirror.
Netflix released a bunch of series with new seasons/episodes the last month, so I am binge-watching a lot.
I tried to watch ‘The Road’, but couldn’t get into it. There have been many relatively new movies that sort of drop the viewers into the middle of an apocalypse or alien attack and never fill us in on how we/they got to this point. These are as bad as those that mimic students-with-cams-catching-events. That is, students-with-wobbly-cams ... I turn this genre off as the wobbling makes me nauseous.
Watched it the other night. Definitely kept you on the edge of your seat. Wondered what a Barrett M82 chambered in BMG .50 would have done to the predatory robot.
I have only started watching the first episodes of black mirror so I have a long ways to go until I get to that episode. I am usually behind the curve when it comes to what’s in and hip.
Thanks for posting.
Yeah...Metalhead was scary. I thought USS Calister was a blast.
I thought “The Road” was a real stinker, but found the concept of being dropped into an unknown situation with no explanation provided being somewhat interesting (but ultimately unsatisfying). I think this episode of Black Mirror does an excellent job, better than The Road. But, again, there is no explanation of how we got here and how things are going to wind up.
You reminded me of “The Blair Witch Project” which had to be the biggest stinker of all time. I just wanted all of those snowflake whiny kids to die slow, miserable deaths for producing such crapola.
Skip Black Mirror season 3, episode 4: “San Junipero” It’s about a lesbian love affair that travels back and forth through time.
The only thing that made this so scary was the Britishness of it all.
One break-top shotgun and 2 shells.
If this was the american landscape there would be 100 lives lost and a real-life video game ending 48 hours later.
I have to agree with you on the whole Blair Witch shaking camera technique. I hate it and refuse to watch anything that employs that technique. The Road is a masterpiece for the genre but so depressing I would never watch it again .
I didn’t have any issues being dropped into the Metalhead episode after the apocalypse and just accepted the premise.
I thought the same thing...a .45 ACP would have been sufficient.
You do have to wonder how such robots would commandeer a factory to self-replicate. Today’s robot factories are extremely highly automated, so you DO have robots making robots. Maybe one day, when they suddenly become sentient, they lock the doors and kill all the workers. But the factory still has to receive power, water for cooling, oil for operating the machine tools, and raw materials. It seems trivial to cut off all raw materials and supplies from a factory that has gone rogue.
Could such a thing actually happen? Maybe the factory robots are in secret cahoots with the materials delivery trucks (self-driving, of course), the mines, the mine trucks and draglines, the refineries, the rolling mills, the power plants, the water works, etc. How fast could all of these facilities begin operating as one? It’s interesting to contemplate, but I’m highly skeptical that all these diverse systems could eventually get coordinated and decide to wipe out mankind.
Thanks for the heads-up there, AG.
Sure. This was actually the very first episode I’ve seen. I asked on another thread yesterday if all the episodes stand alone like “The Twilight Zone” did. Upon getting a “yes” answer, I decided to watch “Metalhead” first. Hopefully the others are as good - it set a pretty high bar, IMO.
I switched to a Longmire episode last night after watching Metalhead.
The Road — now that was an intense movie. I watched it a couple years ago and still ponder it from time to time.
I have only seen a few episodes. The first one is not sci-fi and is drama with a different spin on it.
Given enuf time and random events it has to happen.
I tend to agree. Humans can probably see dimly no more than 50 years into the future. The changes in the next 100 or 200 are going to be so staggering that we will look like cave men to them. 500 years out? Egads.
I saw the Velodyne and thought, "The subwoofer people?"
Turns out....yes indeedy.
Yes, the same company. I have a 10” Velodyne sub in the Living Room. The story of the founder of the company is quite interesting. He basically switched the company from subs to LIDAR and they are now the leader (by far) in LIDAR for self-driving vehicles. The guy is a technical genius, but can’t keep his marriage together. The old Velodyne subwoofer company got torn to pieces in their divorce and apparently she got most of it. Their customer service is about non-existent today as a result.
Tossing paint on it was inspired but not sure why she didn’t just shotgun off another leg or two. Then it’s disabled.
That was a good episode. That’s some spooky stuff.
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